Saying goodbye to the 2024 New York Mets

An ode to the team that made me believe in magic again.

The ending of any baseball season shy of a championship is always somber. One way or another you'll look back onto a collection of moments, or maybe even just one specific one, with a feeling of regret, pain and questions of “what if?”

At the end of the day, only one team truly gets to walk away from a baseball season with unbridled joy. If you’re a Mets fan under the age of 40, you are still in search of a season that concludes with that ever elusive feeling.

Sunday night marked the ending of the latest chapter of Mets baseball, with one of the most magical, fun and unexpected seasons in franchise history coming two games short of a World Series appearance.

And while this premature conclusion comes with it’s share of heartbreak and sadness, the one feeling that I’m not experiencing right now is anger. There have been plenty of Mets seasons where that wasn’t the case. The 2020-23 seasons all ended with either a feeling of frustration, devastation or relief that it was finally, mercilessly over. That is not the way I’m feeling in the wake of this season coming to an end.

When the 27th out of Game 6 of the NLCS was recorded and the Dodgers celebrated on the field, the comforting tones of Howie Rose began to blur into the background as reality set in. I was filled with an instant sense of melancholy and loss, as eventually a single tear rolled down my cheek. I felt heartbreak in that moment, not because this was a particularly devastating loss within the game itself or that the team had blown a game late, but because I realized that this was the last time I was ever going to be able to watch the 2024 New York Mets.

For as much promise and hope as there is moving forward, this specific group of individuals was special in every sense of the word. You will go years before you see another baseball team quite like this one, with an unbelievable never-say-die attitude and such an infectious sense of humor, whimsy, and joy – let alone another Mets team that is quite like this. If everything goes according to plan for Steve Cohen and David Stearns, this franchise will be back and more equipped for moments like this in the coming years. But there will never be another team like this one, and with that comes a great sadness.

Over the last month alone, this team has given us more unbelievable moments, comebacks and celebrations that you’ll see for decades, if not longer. The Francisco Lindor home run against the Braves on the final day of the season, Pete Alonso’s storybook home run to stave off elimination and clinch a playoff series win vs the Brewers, the 8th inning comeback in Philadelphia, Lindor’s grand slam to eliminate the Phillies, and all of the big, clutch innings from this offense throughout the playoffs are memories that will live far beyond this season in the hearts of Mets fans.

Personally, though, what this team was able to do that was more important than anything else was making me believe again.

I wrote about it a bit during the late stages of this season, but my Mets fandom had been feeling fractured over these last few years. The ending of the 2022 season was a particularly bitter pill for me to swallow, as I still remember the sinking feeling of those final few weeks as they choked away their season-long NL East division lead to the Atlanta Braves. That feeling carried into a short-lived postseason run, as I walked out of Citi Field utterly dejected after the club was one-hit and eliminated to the Padres.

I felt broken as a baseball fan. That team was the one with all of the magical moments, they felt “special” and had the talent to do something I’d never seen this Mets franchise do with my own eyes. For it to have all fallen apart in the way that it did felt unfair and cruel, even more than all the difficult season endings that came before it. I carried that feeling throughout the 2023 season as I never felt that the vibes were quite right, and the team had one of their most disappointing seasons in franchise history.

It’s the reason why I was so guarded for much of this 2024 season. It’s why I wrote them off in May, why I infamously “called” their season in late August after a few blown late leads on the West Coast, and it’s why I expected them to collapse in the final week of the season and miss the postseason. I couldn’t believe because I didn’t want to get hurt all over again.

But what this team did over the final few weeks, culminating the day after the regular season ended in an epic game against the Braves before carrying into the postseason, allowed me to finally let go of the hurt. For the first time since the summer of 2022, I believed again. And even though this team fell short of that ultimate championship goal, I will forever be grateful for that.

Though I may be writing this with a heavy heart, I also feel a tremendous amount of pride and hope in this baseball team moving forward.

Yes, we understand that there are no certainties in this sport. We all thought the Mets would be “back” after 2006 – it took them nine years to ever make it back to the postseason. And we thought the foundation was laid in 2015, only for them to play in one playoff game (which they lost) over the next six seasons while that core slowly came undone. But unlike those seasons, this is the first time that the Mets truly have a foundation in place for the extended future.

Steve Cohen owns this team and has the resources to make anything possible – something we never saw in the Wilpon regime – and he finally has the front office in place that he has been building toward since the moment he purchased this team in early 2021. David Stearns is now the architect of this franchise for the foreseeable future, and he’s already made his impact felt by reaching Game 6 of the NLCS in what was deemed as a “transition” year where the club withheld from any big spending in the offseason prior. And they have a manager that you feel confident is going to be at the helm for many years to come with Carlos Mendoza having one of the great rookie seasons we’ve seen from any manager in a long time.

Today I turn 34 years old, still in search of the first championship from a professional team that I root for. These Mets came so tantalizingly close to making that finally happen, and I’m now more confident than ever that it’s a realistic possibility in their future.

There is a lot of work to do in the offseason ahead with a lot of faces likely to change, but we’ll get into all of that in a few weeks when we officially enter hot stove mode.

For now, though, I feel positive and grateful for everything this Mets team has done for me and this fan base as a whole this season. This will likely go down as my favorite Mets season of all-time to date, with 2015 still being a close second, and will be remembered incredibly fondly for years to come.

From the comeback moments, to the stories of Mark Vientos, David Peterson and José Iglesias, to all of the memes, rallying cries and bits – Seymour Weiner, the Rally Pimp, Iggy the Dog, OMG, the Gay Mets, Grimace, dancing Spider-Man, Hawk Tuah, humor/joy/whimsy, the playoff pumpkin, The Rizzler and so many more – this was a season truly unlike any other.

So, for one final time, thank you to the 2024 New York Mets for making me believe again. That is a gift that does not come around often, and it’s one that I will carry into 2025 and beyond…